Streamlining Canadian parliamentary data access: A user-friendly R package.

Autor: Millette A; École Nationale D'administration Publique (ÉNAP), Quebec City, Quebec, Canada.
Jazyk: angličtina
Zdroj: PloS one [PLoS One] 2024 Jul 25; Vol. 19 (7), pp. e0302457. Date of Electronic Publication: 2024 Jul 25 (Print Publication: 2024).
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0302457
Abstrakt: This paper focuses on the methodological and empirical challenges researchers encounter when accessing government open data through the case study of Canada's Open Government Action Plan, with a specific emphasis on datasets hosted by the House of Commons. To address these challenges, we have created an R package designed to streamline the retrieval process of datasets, that are not-so-user-friendly, from the House of Commons website. Furthermore, we have made complete datasets available in both French and English, which are the official languages of Canada, and in multiple formats to improve accessibility. Our package aims to be an invaluable resource for researchers interested in Canadian politics or conducting comparative research. Therefore, a portion of this paper is allocated to showcase the potential utility of our package. Through our research, we highlighted three crucial lessons: firstly, the heterogeneous nature of datasets requires flexibility and adaptability; secondly, open data curators encounter various challenges in addressing user-reported issues; and thirdly, there is a nuanced understanding of "openness" in government datasets. In conclusion, we reflect on the potential scalability of open data initiatives while advocating for a nuanced approach that considers the complex challenges associated with open data accessibility.
Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
(Copyright: © 2024 Millette Alexandre. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.)
Databáze: MEDLINE
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